"We're Like Deer in the Headlights": Physicists Learn No Lessons From Their Failed Wild Goose Chases

A theory called supersymmetry theory arose as a speculative attempt to explain away (or kind of sweep under the rug) a case of cosmic fine-tuning that bothered scientists. The issue of the fine-tuning of the Higgs mass (the mass of the Higgs boson) was skillfully explained by physicist Ben Allanach in a previous article at the Aeon site: 

"Behind the question of mass, an even bigger and uglier problem was lurking in the background of the Standard Model: why is the Higgs boson so light? In experiments it weighed in at 125 times the mass of a proton. But calculations using the theory implied that it should be much bigger – roughly ten million billion times bigger, in fact....Quantum fluctuations of ultra-heavy particle pairs should have a profound effect on the Higgs boson, whose mass is very sensitive to them....One logical option is that nature has chosen the initial value of the Higgs boson mass to precisely offset these quantum fluctuations, to an accuracy of one in 10¹⁶. However, that possibility seems remote at best, because the initial value and the quantum fluctuation have nothing to do with each other. It would be akin to dropping a sharp pencil onto a table and having it land exactly upright, balanced on its point. In physics terms, the configuration of the pencil is unnatural or fine-tuned. Just as the movement of air or tiny vibrations should make the pencil fall over, the mass of the Higgs shouldn’t be so perfectly calibrated that it has the ability to cancel out quantum fluctuations. However, instead of an uncanny correspondence, maybe the naturalness problem with the Higgs boson could be explained away by a new, more foundational theory: supersymmetry."

In an article in Symmetry magazine, we have a similar explanation:

"To understand what’s fishy about the observable Higgs mass being so low, first you must know that it is actually the sum of two inputs: the bare Higgs mass (which we don’t know) plus contributions from all the other Standard Model particles, contributions collectively known as 'quantum corrections.' The second number in the equation is an enormous negative, coming in around minus 10¹⁸ GeV. Compared to that, the result of the equation, 125 GeV, is extremely small, close to zero. That means the first number, the bare Higgs mass, must be almost the opposite, to so nearly cancel it out. To some physicists, this is an unacceptably strange coincidence."

How big a coincidence? The Symmetry article later quotes physicist Lawrence Lee Jr. as saying “the conundrum with the Higgs mass, which would require fine-tuning on the order of 1-in-10³⁴,” which is a coincidence like the coincidence of you correctly guessing the full phone numbers of three consecutive strangers. 

Scientists should have just accepted this case of very precise fine-tuning in nature.  But instead, many of them made a long, quixotic, futile attempt to overthrow it (like someone trying to overthrow the observation that the sun is hot, with some elaborate theory trying to explain how the sun isn't really hot).  Why did they do that? Because they had a motivation, an ideological motivation rather than the motivation of simply discovering truth. Their ideological motivation was related to a belief that the universe should not be anything that looked like a product of design. This ideological motivation is clearly stated in the Symmetry article by physicist Lee, who states it as follows: “In general, what we want from our theories—and in some way, our universe—is that nothing seems too contrived.” If you want for the universe to not "seem too contrived," then you may twist yourself into knots trying to explain away cases of apparent fine-tuning in the universe. 

An article makes it rather clear that the supersymmetry theory was mainly motivated by a desire to get rid of a case of fine-tuning, and make the universe look like it was a little less lucky, a little less  providentially blessed. We read this:

"For example, the small mass of the Higgs boson is notoriously difficult to explain—its calculation requires subtracting two very large numbers that just happen to be slightly different from each other. 'But if you add supersymmetry, this takes care of all these cancellations such that you can get a light Higgs mass without needing to have such luck,' says Elodie Resseguie, a postdoc at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."

All attempts to verify the theory of supersymmetry have failed.  The Large Hadron Collider failed to find any of the "superpartner" particles predicted by supersymmetry theory.  In a recent article in the New York Times, physicist Maria Spiropulu comments on the dismal failure of supersymmetry theory.  Referring to the "supersymmetrical particles" predicted by supersymmetry theory, which physicists wasted endless hours speculating about, without ever discovering, she says this:

"That has been a little bit crushing; for 20 years I’ve been chasing the supersymmetrical particles. So we’re like deer in the headlights: we didn’t find supersymmetry, we didn’t find dark matter as a particle."  

There was a very important lesson to be learned from all the vast amount of time physicists wasted on supersymmetry theory. The lesson is that when nature presents us with a case of very precise fine-tuning (such as we have in the Higgs Boson/Higgs Mass), then we should just accept that purposeful-seeming fine tuning in nature and maybe ponder the philosophical implications of such fine tuning, rather than wasting endless hours twisting ourselves into knots trying to explain away the fine tuning, and sweep it under the rug. There is no sign that our physicists have learned this important lesson.  

In the same article, we hear from emeritus professor of physics Michael Turner.  Turner shows zero signs of having learned any lessons from the gigantic failure of supersymmetry theory and string theory (which is based on supersymmetry theory, but has many more speculations). Between 1980 and 2020 physicists wrote many thousands of papers on supersymmetry theory and string theory. All evidence thus far suggests such efforts were a waste of time, and no evidence exists for such theories.  But when asked about string theory, Turner simply says this: "We will have to wait and see what comes from string theory, but I think it will be big."  No lesson has been learned here.  It's like an old person who wasted half of his life searching for the Abominable Snowman saying, "But one day we'll get some evidence for it!"

A recent article at the Ars Technica site gives us the real scoop on string theory. The article is entitled "Requiem for a string: Charting the rise and fall of a theory of everything." We read this:

"Despite decades of work, it [string theory] has failed to deliver on its promise. What went wrong, and where do we go from here?...The whole idea is on very shaky ground, with physicists beginning to have conferences with titles like 'Beyond Supersymmetry' and 'Oh My God, I Think I Wasted My Career.'  Where does that leave string theory? ....Without supersymmetry, string theory isn’t gone, but it’s certainly on life support."

The New York Times writer asks Turner about grand unification theories, one of the biggest failed wild goose chases of physicists. Thousands of scientific papers have been written on this topic, and no successful grand unification theory has emerged. The New York Times writer asks, "Where are we on unification?" Turner gives us a circuitous answer that shows no signs he is even aware of the grand flop that grand unification theories were. No lesson seems to have been learned here.  The New York Times writer later suggests how big the failure was by later asking, "If unification is the wrong question, what is the right one?"

Ideas such as grand unification theories and supersymmetry theory and string theory are ideas that all gained popularity because of what has been called a snowball effect: a sociological effect by which ideas in academia gain more and more acceptance for a while, picking up followers, funding and attention like a rolling snowball picks up snow as it rolls down a snowy mountain. The diagram below illustrates the idea:

A theory can greatly benefit from such a snowball effect, but the end result is usually nasty, as illustrated by the visual below:

The charts below (made using the Google Books Ngram viewer) shows the failure of grand unification theories and supersymmetry theory. We see a great spike of interest around 1985, with a steady decline: just what we would expect from theories that did not succeed.

Asked about the multiverse (the groundless speculation that there are countless other universes), Turner says this:

"I think we have to deal with it, even though it sounds crazy. And the multiverse gives me a headache; not being testable, at least not yet, it isn’t science. But it may be the most important idea of our time. It’s one of the things on the table. Headache or not, we have to deal with it. It needs to go up or out; either it’s part of science or it isn’t part of science."

That sounds very "deer in the headlights." But perhaps we should use a stronger phrase of disparagement to describe what string theorists did regarding the multiverse. They calculated there were maybe 10 to the 500th power "solutions" to their string theory equations, and then they started suggesting that maybe all these hypothetical universes really exist. It's like some Aquaman novelist calculating there are a quintillion different possible versions of his Aquaman story, and then concluding that this means there are a quintillion universes, each with its own different version of Aquaman. Reasoning like that is the opposite of science. 

Next in the article Turner is asked this:

"Why is it considered a triumph that the standard model of cosmology doesn’t say what 95 percent of the universe is? Only 5 percent of it is atomic material like stars and people; 25 percent is some other 'dark matter,' and about 70 percent is something even weirder — Mike has named it 'dark energy' — that is causing the universe to expand at an accelerating rate."

Completely failing to see the failure of a theoretical program in which it is claimed that 95% of the universe is mysterious never-observed substances (dark energy and dark matter), corresponding to no known particles, Turner merely says this: 

"That’s a big success, yeah. We’ve named all the major components."

The New York Times writer then replies: "But you don't know what most of them are."  We again seem to get a "deer in the headlights" impression.  The New York Times article rather gives us the impression that today's particle physicists may be lost in the woods.  But at least there is one hopeful sign: the New York Times reporter is asking some tough questions, rather than just throwing the usual softball questions.

A story a few days ago on the www.phys.org illustrates some of the lamentable tendencies of modern theoretical physics and cosmology. We have a headline which is another example in which the wildest and most implausible of speculations is passed off as a discovery, the headline being "The bubbling universe: A previously unknown phase transition in the early universe."  We read this:

" 'But if we trust the observations and calculations, we must accept that our current model of the universe cannot explain the data, and then we must improve the model. Not by discarding it and its success so far, but by elaborating on it and making it more detailed so that it can explain the new and better data,' said Martin S. Sloth, adding, 'It appears that a phase transition in the dark energy is the missing element in the current Standard Model to explain the differing measurements of the universe's expansion rate.' "

So now they're speculating not just about dark energy, but bubbling dark energy that underwent a phase transition like liquid water turning into steam? It's like saying, "My zombie theory doesn't work, but I can fix it by making it a theory of shape-shifting zombies." A good lesson to learn from the failure to detect dark matter and dark energy and "superpartner" particles: spend more time studying things that can actually be observed rather than spending so much time on hypotheticals that no one has observed. 

Postscript: A search on the Inspire database shows more than 68,000 papers written on the topic of supersymmetry:

That's many millions or billions of dollars of federal funding, down the drain.  On the same site we can get some evidence that physicists are paying attention to the evidence for cosmic fine-tuning. A search for "fine-tuning" shows 4000+ papers. 

A more specific search for "cosmic fine-tuning" shows 400+ papers:

Futile Speculative Contortions of the Fine-Tuning Dodgers

Around about 1978, cosmologists (the scientists who study the universe as a whole) were puzzled by a problem of fine-tuning. They had figured out that the expansion rate of the very early universe (at the time of the Big Bang) seems to have been incredibly fine-tuned, apparently to about one part in ten to the sixtieth power. This dilemma was known as the flatness problem.

Around 1980 Alan Guth (an MIT professor) proposed a way to solve the flatness problem. Guth proposed that for a tiny fraction of its first second (for less than a trillionth of a trillionth of a second), the universe expanded at an exponential rate. The universe is not expanding at any such rate, but Guth proposed that after a very brief instant of exponential expansion, the universe switched back to the normal, linear expansion that it now has. The theory was devised to get rid of some fine-tuning, but it turned out that the theory required fine-tuning of its own in multiple places. So we had a kind of "rob Peter to pay Paul" situation in which it was unclear that the need for fine-tuning had been reduced. A recent paper says this: "It actually requires much more fine-tuning for the Universe to have inflated than for it to have been placed in some low-entropy initial state (Carroll & Chen 2004)." The paper also refers to "the highly fine-tuned initial conditions required for inflation to work."

There was never any observational evidence for the idea of primordial exponential expansion (typically called the cosmic inflation theory), and the idea was very far-fetched from the beginning, depending on the existence of a never-observed "inflaton field." But despite such flaws, Guth's idea became very popular among the small tribe of cosmologists.   Between 1980 and 2020 the Guth-following cosmologists spent decades cranking out many hundreds of different versions of the cosmic inflation theory, which appeared in thousands of different speculative physics papers.  It's actually a big sign of weakness when theorists have to keep grinding out countless different versions of a theory.  Good theories usually don't have to go through hundreds of iterations. 

It is now the year 2022, and there is still no evidence for the theory of cosmic inflation.  Supporters of the theory sometimes claim that the theory predicts this or that which has been observed.  The fact that a theory may predict something that was observed does nothing to show that the theory is correct.  Many false theories predict (without any great precision) something that was actually observed.  A theory is only supported by successful predictions if the theory uniquely predicts something correctly (being the only theory predicting that thing) or correctly predicts things with high numerical precision (such as when a gravitational theory correctly predicts that some asteroid will crash into Jupiter in exactly 32 days,  7 hours and 23 minutes).  

For many decades cosmologists have been lost in a strange little world of fantasy whenever they dealt with this cosmic inflation theory. As different versions of the theory have kept failing, cosmologists have kept producing new versions of the theory; and by now there are many hundreds of versions of it, making predictions all over the map.  All attempts to provide some empirical support for cosmic inflation theory have failed.  

The main prediction of cosmic inflation theories have been that there would be observed something called primordial gravitational waves, gravitational waves coming from the very early history of the universe. Although non-primordial gravitational waves have been detected (arising from times when the universe was already billions of years old), nothing has come from searches for primordial gravitational waves, which have gone on for years with ever-more-fancy and ever-more-expensive equipment.  A 2019 article states, "Models such as natural and quadratic inflation that were popular several years ago no longer seem tenable, says theorist Marc Kamionkowski of Johns Hopkins University."  A late 2021 article (based on this paper) is entitled "Primordial Gravitational Waves Continue to Elude Astronomers." But rather than discarding a theoretical approach that isn't working, our  cosmologists keep tying themselves into knots by spinning out more and more speculative ornate versions of the theory (which already has many hundreds of different versions).  This has all been a giant waste of time, without any real success. 

It is interesting that when scientists release papers telling us that they still can't find any sign of something they have long been looking for,  something predicted by some theory they cherish, the scientists often use paper titles that don't mention any failure, and try to give their observational failure some kind of positive sound. The latest big paper announcing that nothing has been found in the search for primordial gravitational waves has a title mentioning "improved constraints on  primordial gravitational waves," and the "improved" makes it sound like something positive has happened, although the observational result is purely negative. 

Another "high priest of speculation" professor comparable to Guth is Edward Witten of Princeton. For many years Witten was a leading champion of the empirically unsuccessful theories called supersymmetry and string theory.  They are both wildly speculative theores that have no observations supporting them. 

Like the cosmic inflation theory, the supersymmetry theory arose as a speculative attempt to explain away (or kind of sweep under the rug) a case of cosmic fine-tuning that bothered scientists. The issue of the fine-tuning of the Higgs mass (the mass of the Higgs boson) was skillfully explained by physicist Ben Allanach in a previous article at the Aeon site: 

"Behind the question of mass, an even bigger and uglier problem was lurking in the background of the Standard Model: why is the Higgs boson so light? In experiments it weighed in at 125 times the mass of a proton. But calculations using the theory implied that it should be much bigger – roughly ten million billion times bigger, in fact....Quantum fluctuations of ultra-heavy particle pairs should have a profound effect on the Higgs boson, whose mass is very sensitive to them....One logical option is that nature has chosen the initial value of the Higgs boson mass to precisely offset these quantum fluctuations, to an accuracy of one in 10¹⁶. However, that possibility seems remote at best, because the initial value and the quantum fluctuation have nothing to do with each other. It would be akin to dropping a sharp pencil onto a table and having it land exactly upright, balanced on its point. In physics terms, the configuration of the pencil is unnatural or fine-tuned. Just as the movement of air or tiny vibrations should make the pencil fall over, the mass of the Higgs shouldn’t be so perfectly calibrated that it has the ability to cancel out quantum fluctuations. However, instead of an uncanny correspondence, maybe the naturalness problem with the Higgs boson could be explained away by a new, more foundational theory: supersymmetry."

In an article in Symmetry magazine, we have a similar explanation:

"To understand what’s fishy about the observable Higgs mass being so low, first you must know that it is actually the sum of two inputs: the bare Higgs mass (which we don’t know) plus contributions from all the other Standard Model particles, contributions collectively known as “quantum corrections.” The second number in the equation is an enormous negative, coming in around minus 10¹⁸ GeV. Compared to that, the result of the equation, 125 GeV, is extremely small, close to zero. That means the first number, the bare Higgs mass, must be almost the opposite, to so nearly cancel it out. To some physicists, this is an unacceptably strange coincidence."

How big a coincidence? The Symmetry article later quotes physicist Lawrence Lee Jr. as saying “the conundrum with the Higgs mass, which would require fine-tuning on the order of 1-in-10³⁴,” which is a coincidence like the coincidence of you correctly guessing the full phone numbers of three consecutive strangers. 

Scientists should have just accepted this case of very precise fine-tuning in nature.  But instead, many of them made a long, quixotic, futile attempt to overthrow it (like someone trying to overthrow the observation that the sun is hot, with some elaborate theory trying to explain how the sun isn't really hot).  Why did they do that? Because they had a motivation, an ideological motivation rather than the motivation of simply discovering truth. Their ideological motivation was related to a belief that the universe should not be anything that looked like a product of design. This ideological motivation is clearly stated in the Symmetry article by physicist Lee, who states it as follows: “In general, what we want from our theories—and in some way, our universe—is that nothing seems too contrived.” If you want for the universe to not "seem too contrived," then you may twist yourself into knots trying to explain away cases of apparent fine-tuning in the universe. 

An article this year makes it rather clear that the supersymmetry theory was mainly motivated by a desire to get rid of a case of fine-tuning, and make the universe look like it was a little less lucky, a little less  providentially blessed. We read this:

"For example, the small mass of the Higgs boson is notoriously difficult to explain—its calculation requires subtracting two very large numbers that just happen to be slightly different from each other. 'But if you add supersymmetry, this takes care of all these cancellations such that you can get a light Higgs mass without needing to have such luck,' says Elodie Resseguie, a postdoc at the US Department of Energy’s Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory."

Like the cosmic inflation theory originated by Guth, the supersymmetry theory championed by Witten was a case of "twist yourself into knots trying to explain away a case of apparent fine-tuning in the universe." It advanced elaborate speculations about undiscovered "superpartner" particles that might help sweep under the rug the fine-tuning involving the Higgs mass or Higgs boson.  Just as the cosmic inflation theory has failed all empirical tests (with its predicted primordial gravitational waves never being found), the supersymmetry theory has failed all tests.  It was hoped that the Large Hadron Collider would find evidence of these "superpartner" particles predicted by supersymmetry theory, but it has found no such thing. 

Just as there is no evidence for the supersymmetry theory championed by Witten, there is no evidence for the string theory speculations he has advanced. But for decades physicists have wasted time cranking out thousands of speculative papers on string theory and supersymmetry theory. For decades physicists regarded Witten as kind of the High Priest of string theory, and they kept saying he was the smartest physicist. But what has come from all these string theory papers? Just a lot of speculation and mathematical gymnastics. 

A recent interview with Witten is a sad affair with a "sound of failure" ring to it.  He rather seems to acknowledge the failure of supersymmetry, saying that "it has been very hard to find a conventional natural explanation of the dark energy and hierarchy problems," and that "it seems that the ideas of naturalness that we grew up with are failing us in at least these two cases." He mentions two great fine-tuning problems, one the Higgs mass fine-tuning problem, the other the dark energy fine-tuning problem, involving even greater apparent fine tuning. Both involve involve apparent fine-tuning of greater than 1 part in 10³⁰, as does the fine-tuning of the universe's initial expansion rate.  Witten seems to throw his hands up and reluctantly express sympathy for the idea of the multiverse "landscape," under which there are an infinite or near infinite number of universes, each with different physics.  He says he resisted this idea before, but is now warming to it.  The idea was dreamed up by another string theorist (Leonard Susskind), specifically for the purpose of evading evidence for design in the universe (we can tell this from the title of a book Susskind wrote introducing the term "landscape" for such an imagined multiverse).  

Such a multiverse is a "when all else fails" type of last-resort fallback. Physicists and cosmologists will try desperately to explain away various types of cosmic fine-tuning, speculating like crazy, and trying to come up with some scenario that helps sweep some of the fine-tuning under the rug. When after decades of fiddling with such flights of fancy, they find all such efforts flopping and failing everywhere, their desperate last resort is to "grasp at straws" by appealing to some "all possibilities realized" multiverse. 

Resorting to such a thing is futile.  The issue is why our universe would have such almost infinitely improbable favorable conditions. You do not increase the probability of such a thing by even 1% by imagining some infinity of universes, each with different conditions. Such a multiverse may increase the likelihood of some universe being habitable, but does nothing to increase the likelihood of our universe being habitable.  Similarly,  I do not even increase by 1% the chance that I will get ten consecutive royal flushes when playing poker if I postulate that there are an infinity of poker players.   

Our multiverse theorists are guilty of the most elementary error in logic, failing to distinguish between a "some universe" likelihood and an "our universe" likelihood, or conflating the two. Below are some good principles to remember:

(1) Never assume that because some person is very smart and has learned very much that he would not commit the most elementary and obvious error in logic. 

(2) Never assume that his "singing from the same choir book" colleagues (spellbound by groupthink and hero idolizing) would fail to recognize such an elementary and obvious error in logic.

(3) Never assume that because some person is very smart and has learned very much that he would not advance some theory that is  absurd or groundless, and utterly unworthy of belief.

(4) Never assume that any theory lacking a sound observational basis is science rather than ideology mixed up with speculative narration or mathematics, what we may call metaphysics wearing an "I'm science!" T-shirt.  

From the standpoint of advancing human knowledge, theories such as the cosmic inflation theory (not to be confused with the more general Big Bang theory), supersymmetry and string theory have been futile flops.  They went viral, but were never validated by observations.  There is only one standpoint from which such theories have been successful: they have provided a type of lucrative busy work for physicists and cosmologists, who have received tons of government money for the armchair activity of writing wildly speculative papers.  A similar thing would have gone on if the government had paid theologians very many millions to speculate about the living conditions of angels and the visual characteristics of heaven.  

The latest Symmetry magazine article on supersymmetry gives us some quotes that should cause a chuckle, such as this one:

"The lack of evidence for supersymmetry at the LHC does not signify a death knell for the idea. Nevertheless, 'now the community is going off in a large number of different directions,'  Peskin says. 'We’re all pretty confused right now.' ”

The article also makes it clear that the supersymmetry faithful will cling to their cherished speculations for a long, long time, kind of like some religious community waiting for centuries for its promised messiah. We read this:

"It could be decades before physicists know the truth about supersymmetry. If superpartners exist, Gates says that up to a century could pass before their discovery. But 'we know how to be patient as a community,'  Herwig says."

Supersymmetry is the Standard Model's Wastrel Brother

Online at Symmetry magazine there is a new article that rather clearly explains one of the biggest cases of cosmic fine-tuning: the fine-tuning of the Higgs mass. Thankfully the magazine has corrected the original version of the article, which gave people wrong ideas by failing to use superscripts in some crucial places.

The issue of the fine-tuning of the Higgs mass (the mass of the Higgs boson) was skillfully explained by physicist Ben Allanach in a previous article at the Aeon site: 

"Behind the question of mass, an even bigger and uglier problem was lurking in the background of the Standard Model: why is the Higgs boson so light? In experiments it weighed in at 125 times the mass of a proton. But calculations using the theory implied that it should be much bigger – roughly ten million billion times bigger, in fact....Quantum fluctuations of ultra-heavy particle pairs should have a profound effect on the Higgs boson, whose mass is very sensitive to them....One logical option is that nature has chosen the initial value of the Higgs boson mass to precisely offset these quantum fluctuations, to an accuracy of one in 10¹⁶. However, that possibility seems remote at best, because the initial value and the quantum fluctuation have nothing to do with each other. It would be akin to dropping a sharp pencil onto a table and having it land exactly upright, balanced on its point. In physics terms, the configuration of the pencil is unnatural or fine-tuned. Just as the movement of air or tiny vibrations should make the pencil fall over, the mass of the Higgs shouldn’t be so perfectly calibrated that it has the ability to cancel out quantum fluctuations. However, instead of an uncanny correspondence, maybe the naturalness problem with the Higgs boson could be explained away by a new, more foundational theory: supersymmetry."

In the new article in Symmetry magazine, we have a similar explanation:

"To understand what’s fishy about the observable Higgs mass being so low, first you must know that it is actually the sum of two inputs: the bare Higgs mass (which we don’t know) plus contributions from all the other Standard Model particles, contributions collectively known as “quantum corrections.” The second number in the equation is an enormous negative, coming in around minus 10¹⁸ GeV. Compared to that, the result of the equation, 125 GeV, is extremely small, close to zero. That means the first number, the bare Higgs mass, must be almost the opposite, to so nearly cancel it out. To some physicists, this is an unacceptably strange coincidence."

How big a coincidence? The Symmetry article later quotes physicist Lawrence Lee Jr. as saying “the conundrum with the Higgs mass, which would require fine-tuning on the order of 1-in-10³⁴,” which is a coincidence like the coincidence of you correctly guessing the full phone numbers of three consecutive strangers. 

Scientists should have just accepted this case of very precise fine-tuning in nature.  But instead, many of them made a long, quixotic, futile attempt to overthrow it (like someone trying to overthrow the observation that the sun is hot, with some elaborate theory trying to explain how the sun isn't really hot).  Why did they do that? Because they had a motivation, an ideological motivation rather than the motivation of simply discovering truth. Their ideological motivation was related to a belief that the universe should not be anything that looked like a product of design. This ideological motivation is clearly stated in the Symmetry article by physicist Lee, who states it as follows: “In general, what we want from our theories—and in some way, our universe—is that nothing seems too contrived.” If you want for the universe to not "seem too contrived," then you may twist yourself into knots trying to explain away cases of apparent fine-tuning in the universe. 

This is exactly what physicists did, both with the theory of supersymmetry (an attempt to explain away the fine-tuning discussed above), and the ever-changing and never-substantiated theory of cosmic inflation (designed to explain away fine-tuning at the time of the Big Bang, such as the Big Bang having precisely the right expansion rate to allow for galaxies to form).  Supersymmetry (also called SUSY) involves the speculation that each of the 17 subatomic particles in the Standard Model has a matching undiscovered "superpartner" particle. This would involve 17 different coincidences in nature. The overall chance of having so many exact coincidences is much smaller than the chance of the Higgs mass or Higgs boson coincidentally being fine-tuned. So nothing is actually done to reduce fine-tuning. The theory simply reduces fine-tuning in one place (the Higgs boson or Higgs mass), at the price of adding it in 17 other places, all of these exact matches between the particles in the Standard Model and their imagined "superpartners." It's a similar deal with the cosmic inflation theory, which tries to get rid of extremely precise fine-tuning in one place (the expansion rate of the universe at the time of the Big Bang), at the price of adding even more fine-tuning scattered in various other places, various types of fine-tuning needed to make any cosmic inflation theory viable. 

Supersymmetry has been a complete observational failure.  If we can compare the Standard Model of physics to a high-achieving son who delights his parents with his success, we can compare supersymmetry to a wastrel brother who bungles his life away without accomplishing anything. 

The article in Symmetry says not a word about the utter failure of supersymmetry theories in all empirical tests thus far. The article should have had a passage like this:

Physicists spent countless hundreds of man-years on the theory of supersymmetry. Trying to make the universe look "not too contrived," they spun out ever-more-elaborate theories that evoked an abundance of contrivances to try to explain away the fine-tuning of the Higgs mass. But it all seems like a gigantic waste of time. Their theories have failed every test, and the Large Hadron Collider keeps shooting down their elaborate speculations.

But instead of getting a passage anything like that, we get no mention of the utter empirical failure of supersymmetry theories. Instead the Symmetry article ends with this supremely bombastic sky-high-hubris passage making it sound like the author has learned no lesson from the gigantic supersymmetry midadventure: 

"However bothered they are by apparent fine-tuning, in an ideal world, physicists will find the final Theory of Everything that can explain the underlying causes for every observed parameter in the universe. If physicists ever reach that point, Haley says, 'then you’d really know you solved physics.' ”

“Nature's Deepest Secrets” or Just Mist-Castles in the Clouds?

A new book by Graham Farmelo has a title brimming with triumphalist hubris. The title is The Universe Speaks in Numbers: How Modern Math Reveals Nature's Deepest Secrets. The book is a reverent treatment of speculative physics in which mathematicians and physicists create intricate realms of conjecture that have little contact with empirical reality: things like supersymmetry theory and string theory.

It is rather misleading to be using the term “modern math” to refer to things like string theory and supersymmetry. Speculative and unverified theories in physics should not be called math or mathematics, since those terms have such connotations of certainty. Such theories should be called physics theories that use mathematics. There is no basis for claiming that such theories have in any sense “revealed nature's deepest secrets.” “Reveal” is a word to be used when an observational discovery has been made. There have been no observational discoveries made to support theories such as supersymmetry and string theory.  The universe has not spoken in numbers to give us string theory or supersymmetry theory.  It is merely speculating physicists who have spoken in numbers to give us such things. 

On page 174 Farmelo quotes the eminent physicist Sheldon Lee Glashow as saying, “In Europe, supersymmetry seems to be a religion.” This is a very revealing quote that Farmelo should have carefully pondered, but it seems to have gone in one of Farmelo's ears and out the other. He has no insight into the sociological and groupthink factors involved in the cult-like cliques of modern theoretical physics.

Farmelo admits on page 249 that there is no evidence for string theory, saying that “it is disappointing that the framework has not yet made direct contact with experiments.” But Farmelo still supports it. He says on that page, “In my view, it is both wise and prudent to trust the judgment of the overwhelming majority of the world's leading theoretical physicists, who are confident that this theory is well worth pursuing.”

This is the kind of very dubious ad populum argument that people use to try to get you to believe in theories for which there is little or no evidence. Such an argument will typically make some dubious claim about the popularity of some theory among some group of scientists, without providing any actual hard polling data showing that the theory has the popularity that is being claimed. Are there actually any polls of “the world's leading theoretical physicists” in which they assert that string theory is true or “well worth pursuing”? I doubt it. And since Farmelo has told us that a leading physicist said that supersymmetry (a leading physics theory) “seems to be a religion” in Europe, why should we not believe that the popularity of string theory is like the popularity of some religion, something based in sociology and groupthink rather than sound judgment?

On page 251 Farmelo says, “Some undeniably first-rate thinkers – including Gerard 't Hooft, Sheldon Glashow and Roger Penrose – worry from their different perspectives that theoretical physics has taken a wrong turn towards sterile, ultra-mathematical approaches, many of which have become divorced from reality.” But Farmelo ignores such criticism. On page 250 he predicts that supersymmetry will “sooner or later, be demonstrated experimentally to be a fundamental feature of the laws of nature.” He gives no reason at all for predicting this other than saying “such a discovery would help to justify the faith of many theoreticians that beautiful mathematics serves as a useful lodestar,” referring to a star that guides a ship on which direction to move. So we should believe in theories simply because they seem to have beautiful mathematics? That doesn't make sense.

We get a contrary view from physicist Sabine Hossenfelder:

"And not only is there no historical evidence that beauty and elegance are good guides to find correct theories, there isn’t even a theory for why that should be so. There’s no reason to think that our sense of beauty has any relevance for discovering new fundamental laws of nature."

This year cosmologist Ethan Siegel had a post entitled “Why Supersymmetry May Be the Greatest Failed Prediction in Particle Physics History.” Referrring to supersymmetry theory under its acronym of SUSY, Siegel states, “No reasonable person can justifiably conclude that SUSY is supported by the evidence.” He also states the following:

"There's a large and powerful group of (mostly) theorists who will go to their graves as true believers in not only SUSY, but electroweak-scale SUSY, regardless of what the evidence says. Yet with every new proton the LHC collides, we see the same answer again and again: no SUSY. No matter how often we fool ourselves, nor how many scientists get fooled, nature is the ultimate arbiter of reality. The experiments do not lie. As of today, there is no experimental evidence in favor of SUSY."

I guess we can put down Farmelo as one of the true believers who will go to their graves believing that the supersymmetry theory is true. We should note the tendency of certain people in the world of physics to develop life-long attachments to dubious unproven theories, a tendency that also exists very abundantly in the world of biology.

There are several reasons why the “beauty” argument for supersymmetry is not convincing. One reason is that there are always millions of possible ways in which the physics of nature could be configured in a beautiful manner. So if you imagine some hypothetical configuration of particle physics that seems beautiful to you, you have no basis for saying, “This must be how nature really is, because it's so beautiful.” There will be always be a million other possible ways that nature could be configured on a fundamental level, that would be just as beautiful as what you imagined.

Similarly, I may imagine some very beautiful design that Heaven might have, but it would be foolish for me to say, “This is so beautiful, it must be how Heaven looks.” For even if we assume that there must be a beautiful Heaven, there would always be a million other beautiful designs that such a Heaven might have.

The other reason why the “beauty” argument for supersymmetry is not convincing is that supersymmetry isn't really very beautiful at all. The theory has a little symmetry, but it's not very beautiful because it isn't a functional symmetry. The hypothetical “superparticles” imagined by supersymmetry theory are not necessary for our existence. So while supersymmetry imagines a symmetry situation, the situation is not a functional symmetry, so it isn't particularly beautiful.

There actually exists a functional symmetry in the fundamental layout of nature, a beautiful exact symmetry that is very necessary for our existence. This symmetry is the fact that the electric charge on each electron in the universe is the very exact opposite of the electric charge on each proton in the universe. This is both a symmetry and a functional symmetry. If such an exact symmetry did not exist, the laws of chemistry would not work, our bodies would not hold together, and planets and stars would not be able to hold together (as the electromagnetic repulsion of particles in them would overwhelm the gravitational attraction that holds them together).

Our theoretical physicists virtually never talk about this very exact and functional symmetry that we know exists in nature. Instead, they spend a thousand times more time talking about imaginary, non-functional symmetries for which there is no evidence. Go figure.

Not really beautiful, because it's not a functional symmetry

Motivated Reasoning of the “Cosmic Inflation” Storytellers

In 2017 Scientific American published a sharp critique of the theory of cosmic inflation originally advanced by Alan Guth (not to be confused with the more general Big Bang theory). The theory of cosmic inflation (which arose around 1980) is a kind of baroque add-on to the Big Bang theory that arose decades earlier. The Big Bang theory asserts the very general idea that the universe began suddenly in a state of incredible density, perhaps the infinite density called a singularity; and that the universe has been expanding ever since. The cosmic inflation theory makes a much more specific claim, a claim about less than one second of this expansion – that during only a small fraction of the first second of the expansion, there was a special super-fast type of expansion called exponential expansion. ("Cosmic inflation" is a very bad name for this theory, as it creates all kinds of confusion in which people confuse the verified idea of an expanding universe and the shaky idea of cosmic inflation. The term "cosmic inflation" refers not to cosmic expansion in general, but to the very specific idea that the universe's expansion was once a type of expansion -- exponential expansion -- radically faster and more dramatic than its current linear rate of expansion.) 

The article in Scientific America criticizing the theory of cosmic inflation was by three scientists (Anna Ijjas, Paul J. Steinhardt, Abraham Loeb), one a Harvard professor and another a Princeton professor. It was filled with very good points that should be read by anyone curious about the claims of the cosmic inflation theory.  You can read the article on a Harvard web site here. Or you can go to this site by the article's authors, summarizing their critique of the cosmic inflation theory.

Recently a very long scientific paper appeared on the ArXiv physics paper server, a paper with the cute title “Cosmic Inflation: Trick or Treat?” In its very first words the paper's author (Jerome Martin) misinforms us, because he refers to cosmic inflation as something that was “discovered almost 40 years ago.” Discovery is a word that should be used only for observational results in science. Cosmic inflation (the speculation that the universe underwent an instant of exponential expansion) was never discovered or observed by scientists. In fact, it is impossible that this “cosmic inflation” or exponential expansion ever could be observed. During the first 300,000 years of the universe's history, the density of matter and energy was so great that all light particles were thoroughly scattered and shuffled a million times. It is therefore physically impossible that we ever will be able to observe any unscrambled light signals from the first 300,000 years of the universe's history. So we will never be able to get observations that might verify the claim of cosmic inflation theorists that the universe underwent an instant of exponential expansion.

At the end of the paper the author claims that the cosmic inflation theory has “all of the criterions that a good scientific theory should possess.” The author gives only two examples of such things: first, the claim that the cosmic inflation theory is falsifiable, and second that “inflation has been able to make predictions.” His claim that the theory is falsifiable is not very solid. He says that the cosmic inflation theory could be falsified if it were found that the universe did not have what is called a flat geometry, but then he refers us to a version of the cosmic inflation theory that predicted a universe without such a flat geometry. So cosmic inflation theory isn't really falsifiable at all. So many papers have been published speculating about different versions of cosmic inflation theory that the theory can be made to work with any future observations. Harvard astronomer Loeb says here the cosmic inflation theory "cannot be falsified." 

It is not at all true that the cosmic inflation theory has “all of the criterions that a good scientific theory should possess,” or even most of those characteristics. Below is a list of some of the characteristics that are desirable in a good scientific theory. You can have a good scientific theory without having all of these characteristics, but the more of these characteristics that you have, the more highly regarded your scientific theory should be.

1. The theory is potentially verifiable. While falsification has been widely discussed in connection with scientific theories, it should not be forgotten that the opposite of falsification (verification) is equally important. Every good scientific theory should be potentially verifiable, meaning that there should always be some reasonable hypothetical set of observations that might verify the theory. In the case of the cosmic inflation theory, we can imagine no such observations. The only thing that could verify the cosmic inflation theory would be if we were to look back to the first instant of the universe and observe exponential expansion occurring. But, as I previously mentioned, there is a reason why such an observation can never possibly occur, no matter how powerful future telescopes are. The reason is that the density of the very early universe was so great that all light signals from the first 300,000 years of the history were hopelessly shuffled, scrambled and scattered millions of times.
   
2. The theory merely requires us to believe in something very simple. A very desirable characteristic of a scientific theory is that it only requires that we believe in something very simple. An example of a theory with such a characteristic is the theory that the extinction of the dinosaurs was caused by an asteroid collision. Such a theory asks us only to believe in something very simple, merely that a big rock fell from space and hit our planet. Another example of a theory that meets this characteristic is the theory of global warming. In its most basic form, the theory asks us to merely believe in something very simple, that humans are putting more greenhouse gases in the atmosphere, and that such gases raise temperatures (as we know they do inside a greenhouse). But the cosmic inflation theory (the theory of primordial exponential expansion) does not have this simplicity characteristic. All versions of such a theory require complex special conditions in order for this cosmic inflation (exponential expansion) to begin, to last for only an instant, and then to end in less than a second so that the universe ends up with the type of expansion that it now has (linear expansion, not exponential expansion). We need merely look at the papers of the cosmic inflation theorists (all filled with complex mathematical speculations) to see that the theory fails very much to meet this simplicity characteristic of a good scientific theory.  In a recent post, the cosmic inflation pitchman Ethan Siegel tells us, "If you have an inflationary Universe that's governed by quantum physics, a Multiverse is unavoidable."  What that means is the cosmic inflation has the near-infinite baggage of requiring belief in some vast collection of universes. Of course, this is the exact opposite of the simplicity that is desirable in a good theory.
3. There is no evidence conflicting with the theory. A characteristic of a good scientific theory is that there is no evidence conflicting with the theory. The theory of electromagnetism and the theory of plate tectonics are very good theories, and there is no evidence against them. But there are quite a few observations conflicting with the cosmic inflation theory (the theory of exponential expansion in the universe's first instant). Such observations (sometimes called CMB anomalies) are discussed in this post. The observations are mainly cases in which the cosmic background radiation has some characteristic that we would not expect to see if the cosmic inflation theory were true. A scientific paper says, “These are therefore clearly surprising, highly statistically significant anomalies — unexpected in the standard inflationary theory and the accepted cosmological model.”
   
4. The theory makes precise numerical predictions that have been exactly verified to several decimal places very many times. This characteristic is one that the best theories in physics have, theories such as the theory of general relativity, the theory of quantum mechanics, and the theory of electromagnetism. For example, the theory may predict that some unmeasured quantity will be 342.2304, and scientists will measure that quantity and find that it is exactly 342.2304. Or the theory may predict that some asteroid will hit the Moon on exactly 10:30 PM EST on May 23, 2026, and it will then be found (10 days later) that the asteroid did hit the Moon on exactly 10:30 PM EST on May 23, 2026. The cosmic inflation theory does not have this characteristic of a good scientific theory. It makes no exact numerical predictions at all. There have been published several hundred different versions of the cosmic inflation theory, each of which is a different scientific model. Each of those hundreds of models can predict 1000 different things, because the numerical parameters used with the equations can be varied. So the predictions of the cosmic inflation theory are pretty much all over the map, and it is impossible to point to any case in which it made a good precise successful prediction. When advocates of the cosmic inflation theory talk about predictive success, they are talking about woolly kind of predictions (like “the universe will be pretty flat”) rather than exact numerical predictions, and they are talking about one-shot affairs rather than cases in which predictions are repeatedly verified. Many a wrong theory can have an equal degree of predictive success. For example, a bad economic theory may predict various things, and may vaguely predict correctly that the stock market will go up next year.
   
5. We continue to get observational signs that the theory is correct. A desirable characteristic of a good scientific theory is that we continue to observe signs suggesting that theory is correct. The theory of plate tectonics has such a characteristic. Every time there is an earthquake in the “Ring of Fire” region that marks the boundaries of continental plates, that's an additional observational sign that the plate tectonics theory is correct. The theory of gravitation continues to send us observational signals every day that the theory is correct. But we do not get any observational signs from the universe that it once underwent an instant of exponential expansion, nor can we logically imagine how such signs could ever come or keep coming from such a primordial event.
   

So it is clear that Martin's claim that the theory of cosmic inflation has “all of the criterions that a good scientific theory should possess” is not at all true. Saying something similar to what I said above, a New Scientist article puts it this way:

But no measurement will rule out inflation entirely, because it doesn’t make specific predictions. “There is a huge space of possible inflationary theories, which makes testing the basic idea very difficult,” says Peter Coles at Cardiff University, UK. “It’s like nailing jelly to the wall.”

The tall tale of cosmic inflation (exponential expansion at the beginning of the universe) is a modern case of a tribal folktale, told by a small tribe of a few thousand cosmologists. Below is the basic piece of folklore of the cosmic inflation theory:

"At the very beginning, the universe started out with just the right conditions for it to start expanding at a super-fast exponential rate. So for the tiniest fraction of a second, the universe did expand at this explosive exponential rate. Then, BOOM, the universe suddenly switched gears, did a dramatic change, and started expanding at the much slower, linear rate that we now observe."

Why would anyone believe such a story that can never be verified? The answer is: because they have a strong motivation. The arguments given for the cosmic inflation theory are examples of what is called motivated reasoning. Motivated reasoning is reasoning that people engage in not because they have premises or evidence that demand particular conclusions, but because they have a motivation for reaching the conclusion.

The motivation for the cosmic inflation theory was that people wanted to get rid of some apparent fine-tuning in the Big Bang. At about the time the cosmic inflation theory appeared, scientists were saying that the universe's initial expansion rate was just right, and that if it had differed by less than 1 part in 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000, we would not have ended up with a universe that would have allowed life to exist in it. That type of extremely precise fine-tuning at the very beginning of Time bothers those who want to believe in a purposeless universe. 

Saying that the universe's initial expansion rate was fine-tuned is equivalent to saying that the density was fine-tuned, for the requirement is a very precise balancing involving an expansion rate that is just right for a particular density (or, to state the same idea, a density that is just right for a particular expansion rate).  In a recent very long cosmology paper, scientist Fred Adams notes on page 41 the requirement for a very precise fine-tuning of the universe's initial density (something like 1 in 10 to the sixtieth power, which is a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth of a trillionth).  On page 42 Adams states that, "The paradigm of inflation was developed to alleviate this issue of the sensitive fine-tuning of the density parameter."  That was the motivation of the cosmic inflation theory -- to sweep under the rug or get rid of a dramatic case of fine-tuning in nature. 

The folklore mongers who sell cosmic inflation stories may believe that they have got rid of this fine-tuning at the beginning. But they actually haven't. They've merely “robbed Peter to pay Paul,” by getting rid of fine-tuning in one place (in regard to the universe's initial expansion rate) at the price of requiring lots of fine-tuning in lots of other places. That's because all theories of cosmic inflation themselves require enormous amounts of fine-tuning. But with a cosmic inflation theory it may be rather less noticeable, because the required fine-tuning occurs in lots of different places rather than in one place.

Judging from a 2016 cosmology paper,  the cosmic inflation theory requires not just one type of fine-tuning, but three types of fine-tuning. The paper says, “Provided one permits a reasonable amount of fine tuning (precisely three fine tunings are needed), one can get a flat enough effective potential in the Einstein frame to grant inflation whose predictions are consistent with observations.” How on Earth does it represent progress to try to get rid of one case of fine-tuning by introducing a theory that requires three cases of fine-tuning? And the estimate of three fine-tunings in the paper is probably an underestimate, as other papers I have read suggest that 7 or more precise fine-tunings are needed.

This is not theoretical progress

We may compare the cosmic inflation pitchman to some person who wants to sell someone in Manhattan a car. “Think of all the money you'll save!” says the pitchman. “You won't have to pay $40 on subways each week.” But what the pitchman fails to tell you is that when you add up the cost of the monthly car payments, the cost of car insurance, and the cost of a garage parking space (because there's so few parking spaces in Manhattan), the total cost of the car is much more than the cost of the subway. Similarly the pitchmen of cosmic inflation theory tell us that the theory is great because it reduces fine-tuning in one place (in regard to the universe's initial expansion rate), and neglect to tell you that the total amount of fine-tuning (adding up all of the special requirements and fine-tuning needed for cosmic inflation to work) is probably far “worse” if you believe that cosmic inflation occurred.

What has been going on with the cosmic inflation theory is very similar to what went on for decades with the supersymmetry theory, a theory which physicists have been fruitlessly laboring on for decades. Like the cosmic inflation theory, supersymmetry was motivated by a desire to sweep under the rug some fine-tuning. In the case of supersymmetry, the fine-tuning scientists wanted to get rid of was the apparent fact of the Higgs boson or Higgs field being fine-tuned very precisely ("like a pencil standing on its point" is an analogy sometimes given).  An article on the supersymmetry theory discusses the fine-tuning that motivated the theory:

One logical option is that nature has chosen the initial value of the Higgs boson mass to precisely offset these quantum fluctuations, to an accuracy of one in 10¹⁶. However, that possibility seems remote at best, because the initial value and the quantum fluctuation have nothing to do with each other. It would be akin to dropping a sharp pencil onto a table and having it land exactly upright, balanced on its point. In physics terms, the configuration of the pencil is unnatural or fine-tuned.

Similarly, a paper on an MIT server entitled "Motivation for Supersymmetry" states the following (referring to the many new types of hypothetical particles called "supersymmetric partners" imagined by the supersymmetry theory):

Thus in order to get the required low Higgs mass, the bare mass must be fine-tuned to dozens of significant places in order to precisely cancel the very large interaction terms....However, if supersymmetric partners are included, this fine-tuning is not needed.

Physicists erected the ornate theory of supersymmetry, thinking that they were explaining away this very precise fine-tuning  in nature, "to dozens of significant places." But they failed to see that they were just “robbing Peter to pay Paul,” because the total amount of fine-tuning required by the supersymmetry theory (given all of its many different things that had to be just right) was as great as the fine-tuning that it tried to explain away. So there was no net lessening of fine-tuning even if the supersymmetry theory was true.

The MIT paper above says "many thousands" of science papers have been written about supersymmetry. Most of them spun out ornate webs of speculation, as ornate and unsubstantiated as the gossamer speculations of cosmic inflation theorists.  Supersymmetry has failed all observational tests, and now many physicists are lamenting that they wasted so many years on it. Our cosmic inflation theorists have failed to heed the lesson of the supersymmetry fiasco: that trying to explain away fine-tuning in the universe is a waste of time. 

Postscript: A recent scientific article makes untrue comments about the supersymmetry theory.  It amusingly claims that the theory is a "natural outgrowth of a mathematical symmetry of spacetime."  There's nothing natural about the supersymmetry theory, which is a very complex artificial collection of ad-hoc speculations.  The article tells us that the supersymmetry theory is "well established within particle physics,"  ignoring the fact that no evidence for the theory has ever appeared, and that it has failed all observational tests. This is what so many modern scientists and science writers do:  make untrue claims about the evidence status of cherished theories. 

A recent article in Scientific American says the following:

In the big “inflation debate” in Scientific American a few years ago, a key piece of the big bang paradigm was criticized by one of the theory's original proponents for having become indefensible as a scientific theory. Why? Because inflation theory relies on ad hoc contrivances to accommodate almost any data, and because its proposed physical field is not based on anything with empirical justification.